Adolf Urban

Adolf Urban
Personnel
birthday	January 9, 1914
place of birth	Gelsenkirchen ,  German Empire
date of death	May 27, 1943
Place of death	Alexino ,  Russian SFSR , Soviet Union
position	midfield
Juniors
Years	station
1926-1932	FC Schalke 04
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1932-1933	Schalke 24
1933-1943	FC Schalke 04	127 (109)
1940	BuEV Danzig (guest)
1940	VfB Bielefeld (guest)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1935-1942	Germany	21 0(11)
1 Only league games are given.

Adolf Urban (born January 9, 1914 in Gelsenkirchen , † May 27, 1943 in Alexino near Staraya Russa , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ), nicknamed "Ala", was a German football player. The offensive player of FC Schalke 04 won five finals for the German championship with the "Royal Blues" in 1934 , 1935 , 1937 , 1939 and 1942 . From 1935 to 1942 he played 21 international matches for the senior national team and scored eleven goals. He was a player in the legendary Breslau-Elf , who defeated Denmark's national team 8-0 in 1937 .

Career

societies

Urban, "one of the best players FC Schalke 04 has ever produced", belonged to the large group of Schalke players whose parents had moved from East Prussia to the Ruhr area, father and mother Urban came from the Allenstein district . Urban's nickname "Ala" is an abbreviation of Polish origin for the name "Adolf". The Schalke family had joined their youth department in 1926. After a short interlude at the Schalke 24 workers' sports club, from the 1933/34 round he belonged to the master team of the "Knappen" -Elf, which dominated the Gauliga Westphalia sovereignly . The versatile right-footed offensive player formed the so-called Schalke Kreisel with Ernst Kuzorra and Fritz Szepan . "Cut shots into the long corner of the goal as well as sweeping solo attempts" were his specialty. With the Schalke team he was German champion five times .

When the German championship was won for the first time on June 24, 1934 in Berlin against 1. FC Nürnberg, the enormously dynamic blond boy, sparkling with wit, was still in action as half right in the team of coach Hans "Bumbes" Schmidt . The ex-international from Nuremberg trained the attacker afterwards - against Urban’s will, also due to an injury to the former left winger Emil Rothardt - but successfully retrained to become a winger on the left wing. In this position - with storm partners Ernst Kalwitzki , Rudolf Gellesch , Ernst Poertgen and Ernst Kuzorra - he opened the scoring 6: 4 against VfB Stuttgart after defending his title in the championship final in 1935 after a solo run . On the left wing, he made his debut a few weeks later, on August 18, 1935, in the double-country match against Luxembourg in the national team. With him, Franz Elbern and Rudolf Gellesch also made their debut in the 1-0 win against the Grand Duchy in the national team. The selection of the "established" won at the same time in Munich 6-0 against the national team of Finland . The Worms "Seppl" Fath stormed it on the left wing.

By winning the third German championship, through the 2-0 success on June 20, 1937 against 1. FC Nürnberg, Schalke retaliated for the semi-final defeat against the "Club" from the previous year, when they were 3. Place after an 8-1 win against Vorwärts-Rasensport Gleiwitz had to make do with. The success in the Tschammer Cup in 1937 , the final only took place on January 9, 1938 in Cologne-Müngersdorf in front of 72,000 spectators against the western rival Fortuna Düsseldorf , crowned the game year 1936/37.

Due to a meniscus injury, Urban, like his defender Otto Schweisfurth, was unable to take part in the finals in 1938, including the two finals against Hannover 96. Willi Mecke stormed for him on the left wing. When Schalke won the Victoria for the fourth time with the unexpectedly high 9-0 win against SK Admira Wien on June 18, 1939 , Urban was back on the left wing.

The trained painter had been a soldier in the Wehrmacht since 1935 . He had been in use since the beginning of the war in 1939 and made guest appearances from January 1940 at BuEV Danzig and later at VfB Bielefeld . Therefore, Urban Schalke was only available in the final round in 1940 on June 9 in the game in Leipzig against Fortuna Düsseldorf and could not be used at all in 1941. In the spring of 1942 Urban was involved as a non-commissioned officer in the Demyansk Kessel Battle and was then given home leave. For the championship finals from May 1942 Urban belonged again to the regular formation of the "Royal Blues", only in the intermediate round game on June 7th against the SS-Sport-Gemeinschaft Strasbourg he was replaced by the young Karl Barufka on the left wing. His fifth victory in the final of the German Championship was on July 5th in Berlin with a 2-0 win against First Vienna Vienna . It was also the last final game for the man from Schalke.

In the 1942/43 season he was available to his club in all six games of the cup competition until February 1943 - Schalke lost the final against TSV 1860 Munich - as well as in ten Gauliga games, in which he scored as many goals. He played his last game in the spring of 1943 against Hertha BSC in front of 70,000 spectators. The 422 Infantry Regiment, to which he belonged in 1942/43, was still involved in the fighting for Demyansk on the Eastern Front. In May 1943 the bearer of the Iron Cross died on the Eastern Front . Despite an immediate operation at the main dressing station Alexino near Staraya Russa on Lake Ilmen, he died of a head injury and a shot in the lung.

Urban had already suspected in 1942:

"I will probably not survive the war."

For 70 years he found his resting place in the Korpowo war cemetery , before the chairman of the supervisory board of FC Schalke 04, Clemens Tönnies , announced on June 29, 2013 at the association's annual general meeting that the remains of Urbans would be transferred from Russia and buried in Gelsenkirchen, which also happened in November 2013.

The long-time attacking player of FC Schalke 04 with a pull to the goal proved his accuracy with 79 goals in 80 Gauliga games and 30 goals in 47 finals for the German championship. The sports magazine gushed in the year 1958 on the Schalke striker: "He was a winger, how do we get to see him maybe once every 50 years. Fast, rapid in his flank runs, an excellent technician and dribbler and a true marksman. "The kicker judged Urban's style of play as follows:

“He naturally has an irrepressible temperament and the urge to goal. He can find his way around just as well outside and inside. What we like best about him is his amazing versatility. There are no puzzles for him in the game. "

Urban was one of the popular top athletes whose use as a soldier was particularly emphasized by Nazi propaganda . So he got on the front page of the then synchronized kicker in uniform . Nazi propaganda repeatedly referred to his “heroic death”. Stefan Goch and Norbert Silberbach note:

“In the second phase of the war, especially from the end of 1942 and then in 1943, little consideration was given to the Schalke soccer players, and they were not spared from being on the front. Both the war or front-line deployment of the well-known athletes and, in some cases, their deaths were just as suitable for National Socialist propaganda, which staged the supposed equality in the national community and glorified the heroic death. "

As a soldier in the Wehrmacht, Urban was later a guest player at VfB 03 Bielefeld and Sturm Bielitz, except in Danzig .

National team

After "Ala" Urban had already distinguished himself in the Westphalian regional selection in the federal cup against Brandenburg in February 1935 , he made his debut on August 18, 1935 in the international match against Luxembourg in the national soccer team. In his second international match, on March 15, 1936 in Budapest against Hungary, he scored his first goal in the DFB selection. The man Schalke 04 took 1936 under Reich coach Otto Mink at the Olympic Games in part in Berlin. Playing on the half-left, he formed the left wing of the German team with Wilhelm Simetsreiter from Munich , which was eliminated from the tournament due to a surprising 2-0 defeat against Norway on August 7, 1936. His further national team career was not prevented by this. On November 15 of the same year he was a member of the DFB team, which reached a 2-2 draw in Berlin against world and Olympic champion Italy with two goals from center forward Otto Siffling . The international match against Denmark on May 16, 1937 in Breslau was at a high point in the history of the national team up to this point. After an enthusiastic 8-0 success, they spoke of the " Breslau-Elf " from now on .

In 1937 the three international matches against Finland (2-0), Norway (3-0) and Sweden (5-0) followed. In his tenth international match he scored a goal on June 29, 1937 in the World Cup qualifier against Finland. In the "Olympiarevanche" on October 24, 1937 against Norway, the Waldhof striker Otto Siffling distinguished himself as a three-time goalscorer and in the 5-0 home win in Hamburg in another qualifier for the 1938 World Cup against Sweden, Helmut Schön made his debut with two goals in the otherwise unchanged "Breslau-Elf".

In the summer of 1938, the international striker missed the finals for the German championship with Schalke 04 with a meniscus injury and the world championship final in France with the national team . Urban celebrated his return to the national team on February 26, 1939 in a 3-2 win in Berlin against Yugoslavia. He played on the left wing and scored the equalizer in the 36th minute to make it 1-1. His next international match took place on June 22, 1939 against Norway (4-0) in Oslo, where he again scored a goal. With the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939, he was sent into the war. Nevertheless, he was able to take part in the three international matches against Yugoslavia (October 15), Bulgaria (October 22) and Bohemia-Moravia (November 12) under Reich coach Sepp Herberger . After that he was only able to participate in the game against Italy on May 5, 1940 in Milan due to his war deployment. From November 26, 1939 to September 20, 1942, the national team played 27 international war matches without the Schalke 04 man. In October and November 1942 Urban came again in the games against Switzerland (5: 3) and Croatia (5: 1). The 197th international match in DFB history took place in Stuttgart, the German attack consisted of Ernst Lehner , Fritz Walter , Ernst Willimowski , Urban and August Klingler in a 5-1 win against Croatia . For "Ala" Urban it was the 21st international game and on November 22, 1942 the international game history of the DFB ended temporarily, before a new one after the Second World War, on November 22, 1950 in Stuttgart, against the Swiss Confederation The calculation of time began.

Web links

• Adolf Urban in the database of weltfussball.de
• Master player Ala Urban died 65 years ago in World War II
• Adolf Urban in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Memorial page
• The grave of Adolf Urban

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 65 years ago master player Ala Urban died in World War II  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Club homepage of FC Schalke 04 from May 27, 2008.  
2. ↑ cf. Thomas Urban: Black eagle, white eagle. German and Polish footballers at the heart of politics. Göttingen 2011, pp. 50–51.
3. ^ All German boys , Buersche Zeitung, August 10, 1934; Facsimile in: Stefan Goch / Norbert Silberbach: Between blue and white lies gray , Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-433-6 ; P. 146.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Hardy Greens: Faith, Love, Schalke. The complete history of FC Schalke 04 , Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2011 ² , ISBN 978-3-89533-747-5 , p. 109.
5. ↑ Der Kicker No. 1/1940 , p. 12.
6. ↑ Der Kicker of September 3, 1940, page 20
7. ^ Gerhard Fischer, Ulrich Lindner: Striker for Hitler . On the interplay between football and National Socialism. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 1999. ISBN 3-89533-241-0 , pp. 250/251.
8. ↑ Schalke brings Urban home
9. ↑ Schalke brings Adolf Urban back from Russia
10. ↑ Hardy Green, Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. P. 399.
11. ^ Jürgen Bitter: Germany's national soccer player. The encyclopedia. P. 508.
12. ↑ The kicker. October 10, 1939, p. 1.
13. ↑ z. B. The kicker - soccer. Joint War Edition, September 29, 1944, p. 1.
14. ↑ Stefan Goch, Norbert Silberbach: Gray lies between blue and white. In: FC Schalke 04 under National Socialism. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2005, ISBN 3-89861-433-6 , p. 154.
15. ↑ East German Observer , April 15, 1940, p. 7.

literature

• Lorenz Knieriem, Hardy Grüne : Player Lexicon 1890 - 1963 . In: Encyclopedia of German League Football . tape 8 . AGON, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 .
• Georg Röwekamp: The myth is alive. The history of FC Schalke 04. Verlag Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 1996. ISBN 3-89533-332-8 .
• Jürgen Bitter : Germany's national soccer player: the lexicon . SVB Sportverlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00749-0 .
• Hardy Greens: Faith, Love, Schalke. The complete history of FC Schalke 04 , Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2011 ² , ISBN 978-3-89533-747-5 .
• Ala Urban - His life. His dying. in: Schalker Kreisel , official club magazine of FC Schalke 04, 2013/14 season, No. 10 of November 30, 2013, pp. 52–62.